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Stories Chosen For You
Behind Ayn Rand's defense of an anti-union massacre
June 02, 2023
In July 1943, former Hollywood screenwriter Ayn Rand was still tracking responses, critical and commercial, to her first major novel, The Fountainhead. It had been published two months earlier by Bobbs-Merrill after being rejected by a dozen other companies. Rand had written two previous novels, along with two stage plays, none of which proved successful. Now The Fountainhead was off to a slow start with audiences and reviewers.
While this was transpiring, Rand received in the mail a set of galleys for the memoir (eventually titled Boot Straps) by Tom M. Girdler, chairman of Republic Steel, which operated several massive plants in the Midwest and Pennsylvania. Many Americans had probably already forgotten the most tragic incident that Girdler was associated with, almost exactly six years earlier. If Rand was among them, her memory (and high estimate of Girdler) was surely revived in reading those galleys. Soon she would model a key character in her most famous novel, Atlas Shrugged, partly on Girdler.
Near the end of May 1937, workers who had been on strike for several days at Republic Steel in Southeast Chicago had called for a Memorial Day picnic on the wide open field several blocks from the plant entrance to build support. Tom Girdler wouldn’t even recognize the union, famously vowing that he would retire and go back to growing apples before he’d do that. At least 1500 workers and family members, including many women and children, turned out for the picnic. After the festivities, organizers called on the crowd to march to the gates of the plant where they might establish a mass, legal, picket.
Halfway there, the marchers, at least 500 strong, were halted by a large contingent of Chicago police and ordered to disperse. A heated discussion ensued. A few rocks were thrown in the direction of the police. Suddenly, some of the police drew their pistols and opened fire on the protesters at point blank range, and then as the marchers fled. They chased after the survivors, clubbing many of them.
Forty in the crowd were shot, with ten dead within two weeks. Dozens of the survivors were arrested and lifted into paddy wagons without medical attention. Only a handful of police required treatment for minor injuries.
Despite these one-sided results, local and national newspapers, right up to The New York Times and Washington Post, almost uniformly portrayed the marchers as a “mob” intent on rioting—that is, as the perpetrators of this tragedy. Some falsely suggested that the unionists fired first.
The only footage of the incident is quite graphic, showing the police shooting and then clubbing marchers; it was suppressed by Paramount News, a leading newsreel company.
Then the Progressive Party senator from Wisconsin, Robert LaFollette, Jr. convened a sensational three-day hearing into the tragedy. The Paramount footage was screened in its entirety—and then in slow motion (you can watch it here)--providing more proof of police malfeasance. It emerged that Republic Steel had collaborated with police on this day, allowing them to set up headquarters inside their plant and supplying them with tear gas and axe handles to supplement their billy clubs.
When the LaFollette committee released its report (most of it, along with witness testimony, printed for the first time in my new book on the Massacre), it harshly criticized the police: “We conclude that the consequences of the Memorial Day encounter were clearly avoidable by the police. The action of the responsible authorities in setting the seal of their approval upon the conduct of the police not only fails to place responsibility where responsibility properly belongs but will invite the repetition of similar incidents in the future.”
Ayn Rand clearly did not agree. On July 12, 1943, she typed a five-page letter to Republic boss Girdler after reading his galleys. “Allow me to express my deepest admiration for the way in which you have lived your life,” Rand wrote from New York City, “for your gallant fight of 1937, for the courage you displayed then and are displaying again now when you attempt a truly heroic deed—a defense of the industrialist….” Then she offered to send him a copy of her novel.
“The basic falsehood which the world has accepted is the doctrine that altruism is the ultimate ideal,” she related. “That is, service to others as a justification and the placing of others above self as a virtue. Such an ideal is not merely impossible, it is immoral and vicious. And there is no hope for the world until enough of us come to realize this. Man’s first duty is not to others, but to himself…
“I have presented my whole thesis against altruism in The Fountainhead….Its hero is the kind of man you appear to be, if I can judge by your book, the kind of man who built America, the creator and uncompromising individualist.”
But Rand also admitted that “it shocked me to read you, a great industrialist, saying in self-justification that you are just as good as a social worker. You are not. You are much better. But you will never prove it until we have a new code of values.
“You had the courage to stand on your rights and your convictions in 1937, while others crawled, compromised, and submitted. You were one of the few who made a stand. You are doing it again now when you come out openly in defense of the industrialist. So I think you are one of few men who will have the courage to understand and propagate the kind of moral code we need if the industrialists, and the rest of us, are to be saved. A new and consistent code of individualism.”
She concluded the letter “with deep appreciation for your achievement and that which you represent.”
Girdler replied on July 27, 1937, that he had just purchased The Fountainhead. A few months later, he met Rand in New York and told her that he had read and enjoyed novel, which pleased her immensely, and he suggested they meet for lunch.
This apparently did not take place, but she would, a short time later, create one of the key characters in Atlas Shrugged, troubled steel industrialist Hank Rearden, based partly on Girdler.
Greg Mitchell’s new film Memorial Day Massacre: Workers Die, Film Buried, premiered over PBS stations in May and can now be watched by everyone via PBS.org and PBS apps. He has also written a companion book with the same title. He is the author of a dozen previous books.
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'Highly avoidable:' Ex-GOP Chair calls out Republicans' 'political posturing' on debt ceiling
June 01, 2023
House Republicans who demanded massive spending cuts as part of the proposed debt ceiling increase are merely "politically posturing," according to former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele, who said the whole debacle was completely avoidable.
Steele, who last month warned that the party he led over a decade ago doesn't currently have a direction or a message for voters, appeared on MSNBC's The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle late Thursday night. The host asked Steele if there was some disappointment among Democrats that Biden's student debt relief was taken off the table as part of the negotiations.
"The courts had been making it difficult for him. And there is no real clear path for its survival long term at this point," Steele said. "So, the president made a sacrifice here, as he had to, in order to get this done."
Steele also noted that the "fact of the matter is that this was highly avoidable," pointing to past circumstances where Republicans easily passed debt ceiling hikes.
"It was really avoidable, because all of the sanctimony from Republicans about the concern for the debt and the deficit was not there the three times that they raised it when Trump was president," Steele said. "In fact, the Democrats are like, we get the importance of not bankrupting the country, and we will give you a clean debt bill, which they did, three times: 17, 18, and 19."
Steele added that the "political posturing here is a little bit underwhelming for me."
Steele further called for the elimination of the entire debt ceiling debate.
"Eliminate this farce, this debt circus that we go through every 18 or so months. Just stop it. We are the only developed country outside of Denmark that does this stupid," he said, adding that Denmark "set the level so high they will never reach it."
IN OTHER NEWS: 'Dunce' Marjorie Taylor Greene roasted for Jan. 6 plan that could be great for Democrats
"So, the reality of it is, this is all political posturing," he said. "What all of us watching this program know -- and we need serious players in the Senate, in the House, to deal with the physical health of this country if we think we are going to grow an economy for the generation that his graduating this week, next week and weeks ahead."
Watch below or at the following link:
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'Dunce' Marjorie Taylor Greene roasted for Jan. 6 plan that could be great for Democrats
June 01, 2023
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and GOP leadership have a new plan to try to bring down Democrats: release the raw footage from the January 6 insurrection to even more people, including right-wing reporter John Solomon, pro-Trump writer Julie Kelly, and an unidentified "third source," in the hope the footage will exonerate the Capitol rioters.
This strategy is ill-fated, wrote Ja'han Jones for MSNBC's TheReidout Blog, calling Greene a "political dunce" who hasn't thought through any of this.
"You may remember [House Speaker Kevin] McCarthy previously released Jan. 6 footage to then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who tried to downplay the threat posed by rioters by cherry-picking parts that don’t show violence. Here, we seem to have a similar scenario," wrote Jones. "The initial release was largely seen as a dud. And Carlson, whose team had hyped the footage as exculpatory for conservatives, seemingly acknowledged this by allowing the story to fall by the wayside. Nonetheless, it looks like Greene is pining for another go?"
Indeed, all that really came about from Carlson's release of out-of-context January 6 footage was that several Capitol rioters cited the footage in their trials, believing it to be exculpatory, when not only was it no such thing, the footage was already available to them in discovery.
The problem with these releases of footage, said Jones, is that "The assumption that the broad American public is interested in reliving Jan. 6 — one of the most traumatic and damaging political attacks in U.S. history — is the type of logic you’d expect from an alien who has never spent a moment interacting with actual humans in the United States. Or, perhaps, it’s just the twisted logic of Marjorie Taylor Greene."
IN OTHER NEWS: Trump was asked about potentially incriminating audio in town hall, and he pivoted to Biden
In other words, the plan could actually backfire and benefit Democrats, possibly by reminding voters that rioters tried to violently overthrow the 2020 election on behalf of Greene's party.
"When a right-wing Twitter account claimed Republicans were reneging on their promise to release the footage to the public, Greene offered a deranged excuse. People could use facial recognition software to identify people who were on the Capitol grounds that day and then 'ruin their lives,' she claimed," wrote Jones. "With Republicans like these, Democrats hardly need political advisers. Just paint Marjorie Taylor Greene as the brain of the operation and watch America shriek in terror."
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